Students invent alarm that protects your unattended bag

2016-02-03

Industrial Design student Bo Möller shows how easily their new alarm can be attached to a bag. Photo: C. Schubert

Leave your bag unsupervised without running the risk of thieves stealing it? That could be the case as a unique idea of a small, high-tech alarm from Master students at Lund University is now coming to life.

“I was by myself on a beach in Mexico and had to leave my bag unattended to take a swim. But while in the water I just couldn’t relax, as I was constantly worrying about my things”, says Andrew Lentz, Master student in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and one of the students behind the innovation.

“It was right then and there that I started to think of a solution to this dilemma; of always having to worry about your personal belongings getting stolen.

In cooperation with Bo Möller och Jiang Qian, both Lund University Industrial Design program students, the group thought of a way to construct an alarm that through using blue tooth-technology recognizes the position of the owner via their smartphone or wearable.

“If your bag is moving and you aren’t - indicating that someone else is taking it - the alarm will go off and won’t stop until the bag is dropped,” says Andrew.

The same technology is also used to send push notifications, so if you are leaving your bag behind, you will still know if it is safe.

The alarm in its current form, looking very similar to a USB-stick, can be placed inside or outside the bag through a special hook-function.

“You can also put the alarm on “do not open” using your personal code and that way if thieves open and ransack your bag without it being moved, the alarm will also go off.”

The alarm was designed after a lot of research about thieves’ behaviour and ways of operating:

“We know that thieves will most likely drop a bag if a high-pitched alarm suddenly kicks-off. The most important thing to them is to neither be seen nor heard and they will do everything to not get caught.”

The group has started a company called Serenity and launched a Kickstarter campaign for the product.